Amazing Grace or, I was blind but now I see
by pmonkey815
Summary: Delphine is Cosima's monitor, AU where Cosima has no idea she's a clone. What happens when the clone becomes self-aware? Will she begin to suspect Delphine?
1. Chapter 1

I've always kept a journal, ever since I was a young girl and my mother had given me one as a gift. It was beautiful; hand-bound in leather, with the sort of musty smell that made me think perhaps someone had given it to her long ago. It was the smell of used book stores, and libraries. Now the smell brings her to mind: the corners of yellowing, tissue-thin pages, fluttering with the tinge of exhaled smoke, and the waxy scent of her bar soap. And, of course, all of this simply covering a smell that is so uniquely her, that captures some sort of deep truth about who she is as a person. It is the smell that I can pick out amongst all the others as she comes up behind me and puts a hand on either side of the textbook I'm not really reading, the paper I'm not really writing. Because I haven't written anything, not in a long time. One day, I was presented a threshold into a room full of secrets I could not unknow, and I was told that if I wanted to enter it, I must stop writing a journal.

_For everyone's sake._

For their sake. A written confessional is a suicide note for us all, of course, I'm not stupid. My complicity in this huge, conspiratorial scheme is not accidental. I was led to where I am by a series of choices I made of my own free will. And now? What's changed?

Do I love her?

The answer is not so simple. The answer is not emphatic. It is maybe. There are certainly moments where seeing her pushes my chest out, pumps it with air til it threatens to burst, or leave me breathless. There are times she looks at me from across a room—just looks at me, honestly—and I feel it begin, that flash of an ache, that dull pleasure that pierces my abdomen between my belly button and my clit.

_But do I love her?_

There are moments when I go over to her apartment, letting myself in without even bothering to knock anymore. I will walk confidently up behind her, and she will straighten her back to turn and I won't let her. Instead, I will tilt her head back and kiss her with all the desire she'd struck up earlier in the day, with one of her looks, with a text message or an offhand comment in passing. I tilt her head back and I kiss her and my hand strokes from the tip of her chin down to her collarbone, slowly but surely passing over her trachea, both of us altogether too aware how vulnerable she is. And the desire will ramp up, and I will moan and my hand will stop wandering and it will grip—lightly, too lightly to cut off her breathing or even cause her any discomfort—but just roughly enough that we both know she is mine, that she is submitting, that she trusts me utterly and completely with her body.

Her body which is not really her body.

Her body which belongs to my employer. I've seen a dozen pictures of bodies exactly like hers, in full detail.

And she has no idea. She trusts, blindly, and it scares me because I am not blind. But still I test her faith in me. Move my hands to her breasts and flick a finger across her nipple which is already hard because she's been thinking about me, move that same hand down into the waistband of her skirt and slide a finger through her lips which are already soaked because she's been waiting for me. And while I fuck her, while I take her complete trust and use it to reduce her to pleas and whimpers, and breaths, and "God, Delphine"s, and "harder"s, I am not blind to what is happening.

That is why I am writing this. Not to absolve myself, but to incriminate. She deserves to know, not because I love her but because my guilt is becoming too much, and she is beginning to realize something is not right. And I am a good soldier, so I have told the DYAD, and I am a loyal employee so they did not even bother asking me to find out more. They know I will do what I can, as fast as I can because it is what I was trained to do. Most importantly, I am a good girlfriend, so Cosima has no idea of any of this. So she watches me, wondering what I can handle. Watches me, and tries to figure out how to break it to me. Watches me, so trusting that she considers telling me something that sounds so absurd to most people, but is so normal to me now. Clones, large corporations, conspiracies.

I am smoking more cigarettes now, and she is smoking more pot. I tell her I can hardly see her behind all of the smoke. She laughs at my pun and stubs out the joint in between her thumb and forefinger. She leans forward, crawling on her hands and knees across the bed to kneel on it in front of me. She stubs out my cigarette and begins running her fingertips up my bare thigh. She's high, and I've just been fucked by my boss at the institute, and this moment seems entirely off. I catch her wrist, and she looks up at me, eyes hazy and pupils dilated from the weed.

"What aren't you telling me?"

The question shocks her; it shocks me. The truth is, I don't want to hear the answer because the answer means my time playing house is over and my time doing massive spying and damage control has begun.

"What are you talking about?" She's smiling joylessly, anxiety souring the expression at the corners. "There's nothing. I would never lie to you."

And we make love. That is the word for it this time. This time it is slow and sad and I know she is trying to explain everything through her movements. She has a way of doing that, of thinking she can somehow convey an idea through her body, through hand motions or kisses or juts of her hips. I know and she does not. I am not blind, and slowly she is beginning to see.

So I am writing this for her, and for me. I am writing it so that if something goes bad, the truth does not end with me and the whole world does not remain blind. There is no returning from this precipice, but I can certainly detail the landscape. If I tumble over, I will take the DYAD with me.


	2. Chapter 2

I would like to tell you a story. This story does not have a beginning, or an end. It is the story of life and, while we act out its dramas on a daily basis, it does not die when we do, we cannot remove its mask and step outside our roles. All the world's a stage, or whatever. Honestly, I never particularly cared for Shakespeare. It may be a bit cliché, but I've always much preferred French thinkers.

"Maman died today." A young man, twenty-six years old, carefully stuffs the lighter back into the pocket on the chest of his white button-up shirt, then removes the cigarette from between his lips. "Or maybe yesterday, I don't remember. It was sometime in the middle of the night."

He brings the cigarette back up to his lips and inhales again, eyes unequivocal in their fixation on the girl sitting across the room from him. He's leaning against a mantle, though it is too tall for his elbow to rest comfortably, with ankles crossed. She sits on the couch, covered in papers that are strewn across her lap and the coffee table in front of her. She has large eyes and they, too, do not relent in their gaze. But still, she does not speak. It is many long moments before the young man's discomfort overtakes him and he speaks again.

"I spoke with father, there will be a funeral soon. He'd like for us to come." When she still didn't answer, he sighed and went to sit next to her, easing with the sort of pained movement usually reserved for the elderly. "Delphine, you have to go."

"I don't have to do anything." The girl turned back to her work and the young man, knowing arguing was of very little use, returned to the still smoldering cigarette.

At this point, it is worth giving up the ruse. The girl is me, obviously, and the boy is my brother, Guy. And at that moment, though I seemed utterly unphased, a million thoughts raced through my mind. I'd come back to France to make my amends with my mother, to tell her all of my secrets. And now, she was gone. I'd seen her yesterday, hands trembling as she grasped mine, resuming the act of normalcy that plagued my family. I had not been brave enough to break the facade, to tell her.

And now, the truth I'd wanted to tell was buzzing insistently against my thigh. I pulled the phone out and cradled it between my shoulder and my ear.

"Allo?" My French greeting surely seemed foreign to this man, who knew so little of me.

"Bon soir, Delphine." Aldous' voice was smooth, as usual, with a slightly gravelly texture that made his intelligence seem more dangerous than nerdy. "I was wondering if you'd thought any more about my offer?"

"Yes, I have thought about it." I looked over at Guy, who regarded me and my sudden outburst of English with apprehension.

"I can't hold the position for you much longer-" He was going to continue his threat, but I cut him off. I knew I wanted that position. I wanted to be far away from here. In the United States, with my intelligent Canadian lover. The one who showed up on fliers and radio shows. I wanted to be involved in what he'd promised was the project of my career.

"I'm in, Aldous."

"Good." I could feel his smile through the phone. "When you're back in Toronto, call me and we'll iron out the details."

I flew back the next day. I haven't heard from my family since.

When she kissed me, I must admit it surprised me. It wasn't the simple fact that she did it so much as the way. It was slow. She'd moved toward me slowly, she'd licked her lips as though she were lapping molasses from them. Her eyes had held mine and spoken volumes, but I hadn't heard it. Because she'd spoken with her lips as well: "Don't you think it's time we admit what this is really about?" And my heart and my lungs had seized in my chest, and I'd already begun explaining in my head.

_It's to protect you, Cosima, really. I want to help you, the DYAD wants to help you._

But I didn't get to stumble past my "I-" because she hadn't suspected anything, hadn't known anything. Instead she moved even closer, and pressed those cracking lips into mine gently but firmly. My eyes were open but I did not see anything—how had I missed these signs? How had I not realized?

My mouth responded, pushing forward, my hand rising to cup her cheek at the same time my brain was forcing my head away. I rushed out, quickly. I got into the car Leekie had supplied for me so trustingly. I drove as far away as I could. I was repulsed, yet I ached with longing. I _felt_ when I had been numb for so long, driven by my intellect and logic. When she kissed me, I did not imagine her lecturing, did not think of all of the people who would kill for my position as I did with Aldous. I thought of the life that stirred behind my navel, of the deep and sudden knowledge of what exactly to do, where exactly I wanted to touch and move and how, that was suddenly available to me.

I'd never been with a woman, never even considered it. Yet my body knew exactly what to do, and now hated me for withholding it.

Everything had been going according to plan. When she followed me out into the hallway, I knew she was mine. While we talked, she practically—sometimes literally—fell over herself, leaning forward, crossing her forearms, smiling at me from under her lashes. We were playing the game, the one I'd played with so many men before, and we both knew the steps, knew the rules.

"Enchante." She smiled, looking very much like the word—how does one say it in English?-Charmed? She looked as though the enormity of how charmed she felt had just settled in her stomach, like so many butterflies suddenly landing.

"Enchante." She repeated the word, in that same accent Americans have that usually bothered me. But for some reason, instead of having to suppress an eye roll, I realized I was smiling, too. Not the flirty smile that appeased the world, or the tight-lipped smile that felt so sardonic when I was giving it, yet somehow fooled everyone around me. No, this smile bubbled up and popped in my cheeks, making them ache.

That was the moment I knew something had gone terribly wrong. But there's something about trying to find the moment that changed everything that is necessarily futile. We are who we are, what we are. No one moment can change that. Every choice I'd made had led me here, to this woman—this clone—whose hand I held onto a little bit longer than was customary. I knew I'd come to care for her, it was inevitable. And I knew I could not abort the mission. So when she held my hand, drunk and running through the U of M campus, I had told myself we could be good friends, that being a sincere part of her life was part of my job. In fact, I was painfully aware of how much I wanted that. How comfortable I felt with her. How much I felt like the person I had once been and had always thought I would be again—After, after, after...

I had to leave and I knew it. My head was swimming—from the alcohol or from the stealing or the exercise, I"m not sure—and I had a date in an hour. I took a step closer, feeling her tense where I held her arm loosely. I kissed her, slowly and softly, cushioned by European propriety and custom. Though I know I would never linger with a friend that long, nor would the kiss fall so brazenly close to a friend's lips. I wonder now if I knew, but probably not. It is difficult to be self-aware when you have felt anesthetized for as long as you can remember.

I walked away, and though part of me was thrilled, trembling with adrenaline and sexual energy, the other part cracked and broke, spilling tears from me. The first real ones I'd cried in so many years I could not count them.


	3. Chapter 3

Some Evolutionary psychologists believe the ability to spot deception is a trait innate to human beings. It would make sense, they argue, given that we had to cohabitate in large groups together, depend on one another, trust one another. If someone was lying for their own benefit and you could not detect it, you may not eat or you may be endangered while you sleep. Being able to tell if one is lying was the tissue paper between life and death.

But the unfortunate truth of this fact, the part we all attempt to brush over and make nice with our big talk about _facts_ and _knowledge,_ is that if humans needed to develop the ability to realize when they were being lied to to survive as a species, then enough early humans were lying that it posed a real threat. Lying is not simply something people do, an artifact of our culture; it is our lineage. It is in our genes. It is a part of us.

Some people's genetic predisposition is nurtured from a young age. Those like Sarah Manning and Felix Dawkins learn to lie in order to outsmart others. Their lying is for survival and, as such, it takes on an almost playful quality that glorifies it and makes it appear borderline glamorous from the outside. This type of lie is the Hollywood archetype, the underdog, getting by on their quick wits.

And then there are people like Alison Hendrix, like Aldous Leekie. They lie to keep up appearances, to make themselves seem innocuous and friendly. They tell themselves it is for the best because it avoids conflict. So little of their interactions have any level of genuineness. Small lies like responding "fine" to a friend when asked how their day is going, or "I'm still as in love with you as the day I met you" to a partner, or "you're the smartest person I've ever met." It's strange, though, how quickly these lies build a cage. You cannot hide yourself without obscuring your view of others. They do not live in the same reality as the rest of us.

I was not born a deceiver. It's less that I was not good at lying, necessarily, I just simply never understood its purpose. The first lie I remember telling was to myself. "I'm fine." My feet took me quickly into my house, down the hall, to my bedroom. I sat on my bed, feeling it bounce slightly. I was sixteen. I had just had sex, only... "It's fine. I'm fine." Without changing my clothes, I pulled the covers over my body, over my head, reveled in the safety I found there. "Everything will be okay."

This lie grew, so quickly I did not realize it like strawberry plants year after year, a new plant popping up in a different part of the yard until, untamed, it overgrew the garden, the yard, the neighborhood. I labeled this lie in different ways so that I would not see it; called it _strength_ and _resilience. _Coping. Moving on. In reality, I was stalled in place, watching the world go by and thinking how quickly I must be moving to make the scenery whizz by so fast because the world moved on without me. High marks in college, a new job, an illicit love affair with my boss, the death of my mother. All of these things passed me by and I barely took notice.

She is nervous, I can tell, as she strokes at the back of my hand with her thumb. She's walking half a step in front of me so that our hands dangle comfortably without any strange contorting on either of our parts, but I can still see most of her face clearly.

"I have something to tell you." She cleared her throat, hand squeezing then releasing as she slowed to a stop, turning and smoothing her hands over her skirt. I stop beside her and raise my eyebrows, upset that our comfortable silence and my thoughts have been disrupted. "You were right. I lied to you, earlier."

"Oh?" The statement coincides so perfectly with my thoughts.

"In Toronto, I didn't go to see my aunt, I went to go see... God, this is crazy. Okay." The panic rises in my chest, and suddenly I wish I were assigned to Alison, who had been married to her monitor for years, yet still hadn't told him anything about the clones. Not a single word. And they all knew she'd made contact. "So, there are a few parts to this. Um, the first is this." She swept her arm to the side, to the restaurant next to us.

"I don't understand." Is all I can mutter. Does DYAD own this restaurant? Is Sarah there?

"This place does molecular gastronomy. They have reservations for, like, the next year but I got us in! My friend used to be a sous chef here, but she moved to Toronto. That's who I was visiting." Her smile was so large, her eyes firing like sparklers in the hands of children. "They've managed to combine food and science, it's the perfect place."

"Wow, Cosima." I was smiling, too, because when she smiles, I can't help but do the same. I lied to myself and told myself I wa being paranoid, but I still couldn't shake the feeling there's more to the Toronto trip than she was letting on. "Merci." I leaned down to kiss her, but she pulled away.

"Um, there's more. I... discovered something about myself on that trip." She swallowed, stared at the pavement between us. "I realized that I—" She trailed off, laughing and shaking her head. "You know what? Let's have dinner first. Is that okay? If I tell you after dinner?"

He never mentions my drinking. It is one of the few courtesies we have left, the two of us. He is no longer courting me, my honeymoon phase with the DYAD is long over. When he shows up at my apartment at night, deigns to make me a booty call without me ever telling him he can come over—when he shows up at my door all charming smiles and laughing until he notices the almost empty bottle of wine, the second one already open, the scent still fresh on my breath that smile fades and he brings his hand to his lips, rubbing gently at them.

I used to think this was a gesture of thoughtful concern. Now I know much better. He is stalling, he is playing me. He is projecting concern in a very intentional way. I think of my college roommate, a psychology major. I think of drinking wine and laying next to her on the floor because our beds were too small to fit two. She reads from her abnormal psychology textbook. _Glibness/Superficial Charm. "What does that even mean? Glibness." _And she would giggle as I said the word, over and over. I don't feel like laughing much now as I think of this man and his cold, calculating warmth.

"Do you have something to say, Aldous?" I'm not letting him in now, instead leaning against the door with my hip and its frame with my hand.

"No, Delphine. What you choose to do with yourself outside of work is your business."

It is a courtesy, more than opening doors for me or knowing how I take my coffee or even being there when I wake up in the morning because he's certainly never done that. It is a courtesy, more than the "loving intervention" Donnie set up for Alison. He put me here, and now the least he can do is let me cope without interruption.

I'm thankful for Cosima because she is an excuse. I am smoking out on the balcony tonight, leaned against the railing when he comes by, and I smash it out against the metal and make my way to the door. When I open it his eyes sweep my body—covered just barely by a robe and underwear—and moves to kiss me without even a word of greeting.

"Aldous, I can't." I step back, distancing us with an arm. "Cosima just called, she is having a rough time and wants some company. She's coming over."

"Oh." His face is still close to mine, and I can tell he's processing the information through his desire for me. My stomach churns. There was a time I found this charming, and that makes it worse. He straightens his back, bringing him to his full height, which is easily five inches taller than mine. "All right, then."

He leaves and I pick up my phone, studying it, wishing it would ring and I could hear her voice. I wish she were really coming over. I wish she would come and whisper appreciation onto my skin, paint love onto my neck with her tongue, scrub away the ghosts of his touch, of my past, with her fingertips and her sweet nothings, and the way she says my name. Like she does whenever I see her, like she did for the first time so many months ago now. It does not feel like that long, yet somehow it feels like forever.

"Wait, wait, wait." She pulls away from me, eyes still closed, body still leaning closer to me, forehead rested against mine so that it will not take long for our lips to find one another again when she is finished. "The other thing I wanted to tell you about Toronto." She pulls back more, sitting on her feet, still straddling me on the bed. I want to be closer to her, so I sit up, pressing our torsos together. "It's going to sound weird. And sort of crazy." The panic rises in my chest. No. Not now, I'm not ready. Don't disclose, don't end this. I want to live this charade forever, I was just starting to think it was real. "I—I'm—" She swallows and looks into my eyes, traces my cheekbones with her thumbs. "I'm in love with you, Delphine."

And I know I love her, too, but it aches, radiating from the marrow of my bones to the hairs on my arms because I can't. When she finds out (and she will figure it out, she's too smart not to), she will no longer look at me the way she does. I will be the enemy and it will make sense for her to hate me, to push me away, to never see me again. And I will drink. And I will long for her, for the time we spent together. And I will smoke. And I will lose myself in this emptiness, when that day comes.

But today is not that day, so I flip her over, making her chuckle, and bite her lip, wiggling in place a little until I'm pinning her with my body weight and all of the childish joy is sucked from her by a kiss that I can only hope is infused with my desire for her. I tug at the backs of her thighs and she wraps them around me without hesitation. She pushes our hips together, making both of us aware of how there are far too many clothes between us. We separate, each of us removing the barriers ourselves, aware of how much faster it will be, how much quicker we will be pressed together, skin against skin, feeling each other's heat and friction. I stand and she wiggles out of her dress, and I out of my skirt and blouse, and then we're back together, my hips grinding against hers, pressing wildly, instinctually, in a way I'd never realized was in me before I met her.

She's gulping down breaths, surprised at my ferocity and not willing to question it. Tilting her hips in just the right way so that mine press against her clit with every crash, and she's whimpering in syncopated rhythm with my bites into her neck and shoulder that coincide with the shocks of electricity that sizzle through the pipeline from my chest to my groin and back. She slips a hand between us, taking control of the situation, as she often does, teasingly playing with me, dipping her finger inside of me to the first knuckle, then back out, up to my clit and back down.

We're not moving now, neither of us, as I wait impatiently for her to fuck me, and she revels in the small tensing and releasing of different muscle groups in my body. She licks her lips as she watches the space between our bodies, sees where her hand disappears and how my hips sometimes jerk, and sometimes roll smoothly as she teases me. My chest is heaving and her other hand comes up to graze a nipple and I wonder how I lost control of this situation so quickly.

"Delphine." Her voice is quiet, awed, yet she tugs harshly on my nipple, and my hips jerk, taking her finger in deeper as they go.

I drop my head and let it hang, face obscured by my hair and mouth lingering open in a silent, elongated moan. "Y-yes, cherie?"

"Do you love me, too?" Her lower lip is trembling just the smallest bit, and I can tell she's afraid. I can tell I hold her heart in my hand and I could crush it wit a flick of my fingers.

"Yes, Cosima." She rewards me by pressing her finger into me as deeply as she can. "Shit." It's always strange to me when I swear in English. There's something oddly romantic and illicit about it, like I am still a schoolgirl learning how to swear in other languages from the foreign exchange students after class.

"Say it." Her finger, joined by a second, pulls out again, then moves languidly back into me, flows with force but no sense of urgency, like the tides.

"I love you, Cosima." My thighs are shaking—she's pressing her thrusts into me with the force of her hips, using her legs wrapped around me for leverage—but I'm not about to tell her to stop, especially not when she's picked up her pace, fucking me properly, and whimpering along with me now that she's managed to press her clit into the back of her hand while she fucks me.

Her hand moves from my nipple to the back of my neck, bringing me down into a kiss that makes me forget about my quaking muscles and lose myself in the moment again. She breaks away from me, pulling at my lip with her teeth as she moves, tearing the moan from me until she has to release me to flop flat onto her back. She arches her head back as she picks up her pace, biting at her lip and grasping at her hair, at the bedspread, and then at my back in quick succession, as though she's not entirely sure where her hand belongs.

"Say it again." It sounds like a command, but it's a request, a desperate one from a woman teetering on the edge, who needs to be talked down.

"Je t'aime."

"Fuck." Three more thrusts and she slows inside me, huffing out short breaths, shoulders pushing her body off the bed, grasping at my back and leaving searing lines on my shoulder from where her short nails scraped my skin.

I give her a minute to collect herself, but my body is riding her hand without thinking about it, small thrusts that I can't help because fuck, I'm close, too. My hand is clenching and unclenching the sheets, feeling selfish but also wishing she'd come down and realize how badly I need her. Her eyes flutter open, all afterglow and hazy, loving eyes until she realizes. And smirks.

"Mmm. Do you need something, Dr. Cormier?" I hate it when she does this, and she knows it. I'm not uncomfortable with sex, but there's still something that feels weird about saying what I want. I've never had to do it. The men I'd slept with before followed the script: Kissing, foreplay, fucking, maybe using their hands to get me off when they finished before me. But she wants to hear me say it, in detail. Wants me to lay out a plan.

"Cosima, please." My hips buck on her stilled fingers again.

"Please what?"

I falter, the disconnect between my brain and my mouth so profound I don't know if it's ignorance or embarrassment that keeps me from speaking. She pulls her hand out from between us and I whimper out a small "non," but it does not stop her from taking her fingers into her mouth and moaning.

"You taste so good, baby." She rolls her hips up to meet mine again, and it sends scalding shocks out to my fingertips and toes. All I can think about is how I wish she would stop teasing me.

She rolls us so that she's straddling me on the bed, reaching down and pressing her fingers into herself, surging forward onto her fingers and pressing the back of her hand into me. "You are such a—" But she cuts me off by bringing those same fingers up to my lips, waiting patiently for me to open them and let her push them inside. I suck her taste off her fingers, licking up the underside of them, and hearing a little whimper when I do. It's still odd to me how this is so sexy; it's one of those things about sex with a woman I would never have guessed.

"What do you want, Delphine?" Her voice is low, the teasing dropped from her timbre, now just pure desire.

"I want you to fuck me." It doesn't take long from there, her fingers entering me sharply and fucking me mercilessly, with a few well-timed curls, and I melt into her bed, grasping at her dreads and whimpering and pressing into her and pulling her down and just wanting her touching me everywhere we can make contact.

And as I return from my high, I realize she's collapsed on top of me, nuzzling into my neck, whispering her secrets into it.

"I love you so much."

And I know she is not lying.


End file.
